North T is the high grade bastnaesite starter pit at the heart of Nechalacho. It is the one part of the project that has already been mined, processed and sold. Across 2021 and 2022, a demonstration campaign took a bulk sample from a shallow open pit and upgraded it on site through a TOMRA ore sorter, proving the mineralisation responds to simple physical separation. In June 2024, Vital sold the resulting material to the Saskatchewan Research Council for C$3.0 million, with the Canadian government facilitating the sale to keep strategic feedstock out of Chinese supply chains.

That campaign also left infrastructure on the ground. The open pit, a graded road to the Great Slave Lake barge point, an airstrip, water management and the ore sorter give the site a real head start, about 30 minutes by air from Yellowknife. Roughly 45,000 tonnes of mined material still sits on surface, ready for the next round of processing.